title:Pygmalion and My Fair LadyPygmalion a quiet and modest maiden
Author:George Bernard ShawXiaoBernard
Name of publishing house:Signet Classics
Published:2006
Language: English
ISBN9780451530097
product Size:10.6 x 1.6 x 17.1 cm
Package: simple package
Number of pages:226 (subject to the real object)
Pygmalion and My Fair Lady"Pygmalion》,Also known as Pygmalion and the flower girl, my fair lady. It is a collection of screenplays by the famous Irish dramatist Bernard Shaw, which has been adapted into musicals and films, and performed by powerful actors such as Audrey Hepburn. For a century, "my fair lady" has been changed into films, television and operas in various languages, such as German, French, Italian, polish and so on, and has been so popular. As a representative writer of realistic drama, George Bernard Shaw is good at humor and satire. And because of the edification of music and philosophy education, his works often give people artistic enjoyment.
Reasons for recommendation:
1.One of Bernard Shaws widely circulated works is worth collecting and reading;
2.The classic representative works of realistic drama, which can not be missed by drama lovers;
3H.Authentic English writing is an excellent choice for language learners to improve their language ability;
4.Clear printing, comfortable reading, light volume and easy to carry.
PYGMALION remains Shaw’s most popular play. The play’s widest audiences know it as the inspiration for the highly romanticized 1956 musical and 1964 filmMy Fair LadyH. PYGMALION has transcended cultural and language barriers since its first production. There was no country which didn’t have its own “take” on the subjects of class division and social mobility, and it’s as enjoyable to view these subtle differences in settings and costumes as it is to imagine translators wracking their brains for their own equivalent of “Not bloody likely.”
With an Introduction by Richard H. Goldstone
The ancient Greeks tell the legend of the sculptor Pygmalion, who created a statue of a woman of such surpassing beauty that he fell in love with his own creation. Then, Aphrodite, taking pity on this man whose love could not reach beyond the barrier of stone, brought the statue to life and gave her to Pygmalion as his bride.
Centuries later, George Bernard Shaw captured the magic of this legend in his celebrated romantic play, PYGMALION. Pygmalion became Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, his statue an untutored flower girl from the streets of London, and the barrier between them the difference in their stations in life.
InMy Fair Lady, Alan Jay Lerner takes the legend one step further—the barrier is swept away and Higgins and Eliza are reunited as the curtain falls on one of the loveliest musical plays of our time—winning seven Tonys for its original Broadway production, and seven Oscars for its film adaptation.
Introduction
Foreword toPygmalion
Publisher’s Note
I Pygmalion:A Romance in Five Acts
Shorthand Fragment, 1914, Bernard Shaw
Bernard Shaw Flays Filmdom’s “Illiterates”
IIMy Fair Lady:A Musical Playin Two Acts
NOTEby Alan Jay Lerner
Early in his career,George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) wrote for newspapers and magazines as a critic of art, literature, music, and drama. From 1893 to 1939, the most active period of his career, Shaw wrote forty-seven plays. By 1915, his international fame was fIRmly established and productions of Candida, Man and Superman, Arms and the Man, and The Devils Disciple appeared in many countries around the world. He went on to write such dramas as Heartbreak House, Back toWithhuselah,Androcles and the Lion, andSaint Joan. Shaw is the only person to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature and an Oscar.
With the composer Frederick Loewe,Alan Jay Lerner(1918-86) created such classic musicals asBrigadoon,Tooth, Camelot, andMy Fair LadyH.Among his other collaborators were Kurt Weill (loveLifte), BurtonLane (Royal Wedding,On a Clear Day You Can See Forever), Andre Previn (COCO), and Leonard Bernstein (1600 Pennsylvania Avenue). For his work, Lerner won several Oscars and a Grammy Award.
ACT ONE
London at 11.15 p.m. Torrents of heavy summer rain. Cab whistles blowing frantically in all directions. Pedestrians running for shelter into the portico of St. Pauls Church, where there are already several people, among them a lady and her daughter in evening dress. They are all peering out gloomily at the rain, except one man with his back turned to the rest, who seems wholly preoccupied with a notebook in which he is writing.
The church clock strikes the first quarter.
THE DAUGHTER (in the space between the central pillars, close to the one on her left): Im getting chilled to the bone. What can Freddy be doing all this time? He’s been gone twenty minutes.
The Mother (on her daughter’s right): Not so long. But he ought to have got us a cab by now.
A BYSTANDER (On the ladys right): He won’t get no cab not until half-past eleven, missus, when they come back after dropping their theatre fares.
THE MOTHER: But we must have a cab. We can’t stand here until half-past eleven. Its too bad.
THE BYSTANDER: Well, it ain’t my fault, missus.
THE DAUGHTER: If Freddy had a bit of gumption, he would have got one at the theatre door.
THE MOTHER: What could he have done, poor boy?
THE DAUGHTER: Other people got cabs. Why couldn’t he?
(Freddy rushes in out of the rain from the Southampton Street side, and comes between them closing a dripping umbrella. He is a young man of twenty, in evening dress, very wet around the ankles.)
THE DAUGHTER: Well, haven’t you got a cab?
FREDDY: There’s not one to be had for love or money.
THE MOTHER: Oh, Freddy, there must be one. You can’t have tried.
THE DAUGHTER: Its too tiresome. Do you expect us to go and get one ourselves?
FREDDY: I tell you they’re all engaged. The rain was so sudden: nobody was prepared; and everybody had to take a cab. I’ve been to Charing Cross one way and nearly to Ludgate Circus the other; and they were all engaged.
THE MOTHER: Did you try Trafalgar Square?
FREDDY: There wasn’t one at Trafalgar Square.
THE DAUGHTER: Did you try?
FREDDY: I tried as far as Charing Cross Station. Did you expect me to walk to Hammersmith?
THE DAUGHTER: You haven’t tried at all.
THE MOTHER: You really are very helpless, Freddy. Go again; and don’t come back until you have found a cab.
FREDDY: I shall simply get soaked for nothing.
THE DAUGHTER: And what about us? Are we to stay here all night in this draught, with next to nothing on. You selfish pig.
